alex speier

When the Red Sox drafted Clay Buchholz in 2005, he inherited a legacy. Now, through five starts in 2013, he is doing his damnedest to live up to it.

Pedro Martinez's tenure in Boston represented an extraordinary gift, an opportunity to see one of the most dominant pitchers of any era performing at the height of his powers. But it did not end with his Red Sox tenure. In 2004, when Martinez elected to leave the Sox to sign a four-year contract with the Mets as a free agent, he left a parting gift: two compensatory draft picks that the Sox had in the 2005 draft as a result of his egress.

One proved a bust. In the second round of a deep 2005 draft, the Red Sox selected high school catcher Jon Egan. He never advanced past A-ball before retiring in 2008.

The other? That was a supplemental first-round selection that became Buchholz, a fact of which the young right-hander became aware shortly after the draft.

"I wasn't really paying attention in that much detail when [the draft] was going on, but after a month or so, where I got to Lowell, that's when I read the thing and that's when I saw it. It is pretty cool to be linked [to Martinez]," Buchholz said recently. "He was one of my favorite guys to watch: fearless, threw hard and had an awesome change up and curveball. That's sort of what I eventually modeled myself after -- a guy who could throw fastballs and strike people out and who also had a couple other pitches he could go to at any time."

Now, Buchholz is providing his own sort of tribute to the future Hall of Famer. At 2013, Buchholz is off to a start so spectacular that not even Martinez can claim to have equaled it.

At the start of 2013, following his 7 2/3 innings and two runs permitted with 10 strikeouts and three walks in a 7-2 victory over the Astros on Thursday, Buchholz (5-0, 1.19 ERA) has delivered five straight starts of at least seven innings and no more than two runs allowed.

Martinez never had such a stretch to start a year (he topped out at four straight starts that met those criteria to open a campaign). Indeed, only three pitchers in Red Sox history (dating to 1916) -- Roger Clemens in 1991 (7 straight), Boo Ferriss in 1945 (7) and Dutch Leonard in 1917 (5) -- have had a run of such consistent innings and dominance as the one that Buchholz is currently on.

Buchholz is emerging as an innings-consuming force who is altering the dynamic of the pitching staff. In a year where the Sox have had nine starts that have lasted five or fewer innings (tied for the fifth most in the majors), Buchholz has offered a reprieve to an often-taxed bullpen, permitting the Sox to hit a reset button in the rest cycles of a talented but (in the early going) frequently used group of relievers.

"Those innings are like gold," said Sox manager John Farrell. "To walk off the mound in the eighth inning -- a job well done."

Perhaps most remarkable is the fact that Buchholz is now at a point in his career where he's giving the Sox a significant innings workload even while he experiences something of a breakthrough in terms of his strikeout rate. With his 10 punchouts on Thursday, the right-hander now has 39 strikeouts in 37 2/3 frames this year -- a 9.3 strikeouts per nine rate that would easily rate as a career high, and that represents a considerable jump from the 6.3 strikeouts per nine that he's averaged since 2009.

How is he achieving his considerable increase in strikeouts?

"Four pitches for strikes," said Farrell, referencing what has become a compelling mix of Buchholz's fastball (both a two- and four-seamer), cutter, curveball and changeup, each of which yielded swings and misses against the Astros. "He and [catcher Jarrod Saltalamacchia] have done a very good job of reading swings and aggressiveness. He's done a very good job of pitching ahead in the count, most of all. And it's allowed him to pitch to a scouting report and exploit some holes of given hitters. And I think that maturity, and the game slowing down for him. and when he's on the mound, the fact that he's got things under control, you're more ready to see the swings that are taking place at the plate and attack accordingly."

A lot of elements are coming together that have made Buchholz arguably as valuable as any member of the Red Sox through the early stages of the season, not the least of which is his ability to adjust within an outing to what he's throwing and to figure out different ways to shut down opponents. On Thursday, for instance, Buchholz couldn't get a feel for the two-seam fastball that has become his bread and butter, an early contact offering, and so he primarily employed four-seamers with his mix of three secondary pitches.

In his ability to adapt and adjust, Buchholz looks like a pitcher who is working with tremendous confidence on the mound. While he doesn't exude the amazing Pedro-like air of arrogance on the mound, there is purpose and certainty to what the 28-year-old right-hander is doing, with a great tempo on the mound that was evident on Thursday when, after requiring 60 pitches through three innings, he needed just 49 through his final 4 2/3 frames of work.

At the same time, while Buchholz recognizes that he's on a tremendous run, he admits to an element of good fortune in what he's doing.

"Things are going right. Balls that were homers last year that I'm missing in the middle of the zone, they're either fouling them off or swinging through them or taking them," said Buchholz. "It's not always that way. I think everybody knows that everybody's going to have their rough outings, but you try to stay consistent, do the same thing in between each start and just prepare as much as I can for whatever team we're playing."

Yet perhaps Buchholz is being too modest in such a characterization. After all, the start of his 2013 campaign does not represent a reversal of what he did last year. To the contrary, it's very similar to what he did over the last several months of 2012. From last July through September, for instance, Buchholz had a run in which he lasted seven or more innings in 11 of 12 starts; he's lasted that long in 20 of his last 25 outings.

Still, at the start of last year, his season-ending numbers were ruined in large part by a poor start as he navigated the uncertainty that came with his return from a season-ending broken bone in his lower back in 2011. This year, unencumbered by any doubts, he's been dominant out of the chute.

It remains to be seen where this strong start takes him, but it lays the groundwork for what could be a special season. Buchholz has already shown -- in a 2010 season where he finished the year with a 2.33 ERA -- the ability to dominate on a consistent basis in a fashion not seen by a Red Sox pitcher since Martinez' prime. This year, he once again looks very much like he did that season.

Indeed, a case can be made that, in the early paces of this year, he looks like an even better pitcher than he did in that All-Star campaign, given the consistency of his innings total as well as the amplified strikeout numbers. In the season's first month, Buchholz is on a Pedro-like run that underscores what a remarkable parting gift the former Red Sox great left to his team.

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